0800 and 0808 numbers

Freephone numbers

What are 0800 numbers and 0808 numbers?

Numbers starting with 0800 or 0808 are freephone numbers and cost nothing to call from UK landlines and mobile phones.

Freephone numbers allow callers to ring an organisation at no charge, with the cost of the call paid for by the organisation receiving the call. Common uses for them include:

Sales and customer service lines

Charity and government helplines

Access to prepaid calling cards

Are 0800 numbers free from mobiles?

Yes, 0800 numbers and 0808 numbers have been free to call from all personal mobile phones and landlines since July 2015. Previously, most mobile networks had charged for calls to 0800 numbers and 0808 numbers.

Calling freephone numbers from payphones

Some freephone numbers may not be accessible from BT payphones.

Organisations have to pay a surcharge when they accept incoming calls to their 0800 and 0808 numbers from payphones. This was reportedly as high as 85p per minute in late 2017 and some organisations choose to block such calls instead of paying the surcharge.

Further information

All numbers starting 080 are free to call and have the same technical features. This includes 08000 numbers, 08080 numbers, 08085 numbers and all other numbers that start with the digits 0800 or 0808, regardless of how the number is displayed or what the following digits are.

Freephone calls were originally made by calling the operator and asking for a company by name. However, by the end of the 1980s, dedicated direct dial freephone prefixes had come into use: 0800 was used by BT, while the prefixes 0500, 0321 and 0958 were amongst those used by other phone companies.

Numbers starting 0808 80 are reserved exclusively for charity helplines and advice lines. These numbers are overseen by the Helplines Partnership.